


Ribcages

by Insomne



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Activism, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Androids, Cyborgs, Everyone is pan and sexually active, Explicit Sexual Content, Fucked up government, Hallucinogens, M/M, Masturbation, Morally Ambiguous Character, Multiple Orgasms, Mutual Masturbation, Oral Sex, Out of Character, Past Abuse, Politics, Recreational Drug Use, Rough Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Shallureith except not really... everything is ambiguous and nothing has a clear answer, Sort Of, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Threesome, Trans Keith (Voltron), Trans Male Character, Transphobia, afab language, kallura except not really?, sensitive topics, this is dark and this is your first warning
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-18 18:07:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16522076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insomne/pseuds/Insomne
Summary: Keith takes stock of the white hair, the scars, the bionic arm with Altean markings. He leans forward and reads 117-578-330 engraved on the silver band where his elbow should be. It’s a registration code like Allura’s.“You need to leave.” He says harshly.Shiro has a forkful of ramen Allura had heated halfway into his mouth. He pulls it away and has the gall to stare at Keith like he’s not sure what’s going on, and it boils the blood under Keith’s veins. “What?”Keith stands, scrapping the chair across his white tiles. From the table, he gathers envelopes and gadgets into his arms and more shit he’d stupidly left for Shiro to document and report back. “You need to leave.” He repeats. “You can’t stay here. Your owner’s gonna track you and I’ve done too much to be fucked over by some white government hotshot asshole.”





	Ribcages

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters are usually 10k but I’ve had this on my docs for 6 months and I want to feel motivated again to continue this.
> 
> Cyberpunk is always morally gray and fucked up, so the language is harsh and the topics are harsh and everything is harsh so if that’s not your cup of tea, I’m sorry you get to miss the best genre in the universe.
> 
> Everything is ambiguous and up for your own interpretation, but most things will be addressed and explained in detail in later chapters.
> 
> This is also a concept I’ve been mulling over in my head since I was 15, so this is all very self-indulgent. It just got darker as I grew up and discovered that fiction is where I can express really gross things without it affecting real life. Shrug emoji?
> 
> Read all the tags! Enjoy!

At this point, the flashing neon lights, alcohol, and hallucinogens would be enough to give anyone a seizure or epileptic attack, but Keith can see girls in tight latex and men in fluorescent suits throwing their heads back and forward, grinding over the gooey pink liquid that sloshes from their glasses and spills on each other without a care in the world. Aliens sit by the sides or on the couches with partners draped across their thighs, among other places. He can see a human girl with a golden halo circling her head, giggling as a tentacle-like appendage unzips the back of her white bodysuit. 

 

    There’s an android with short green hair and a transparent plastic dress making his way through the crowd with a tray held high. On it is a pile consisting of condoms and strange little boxes of various colors that shine vibrant under the club’s lights. Ten random hands and appendages shoot forward from the crowd to pick them up and holler at the body pressed against them, hips rutting against each other and drugs sizzling on their tongues with the intent to guide them to a private corner Keith knows they won’t reach before whatever they’ve put in their system settles in. Beside his bar stool, two women clad in neon triangles as a semblance of modesty have been swapping spit fervently for about twenty minutes, now, and when they tip over a glass in their mess of roaming hands, thick cyan tinted liquid pouring out of it slowly like plasma, they pay it no mind. 

 

Keith sighs. Of all places, this was not where he expected to meet up with his new client. Especially when they’re running late by an hour.

 

“Yo, buddy!” calls out a voice behind him. He turns to face the bartender who’s currently rubbing a black rag on the mess the girls made. He upturns the glass and wipes the goo away before shooing the women elsewhere. Keith watches them go, mostly because he has nothing else to do but wait for his clients, partly because one of them has a neon blue handprint running from her inner thigh to her left asscheek. 

 

  “Can you believe them?” The man scoffs, shaking his head like his brain can’t wrap itself around the idea of two girls petting each other against a bar in a club— like Keith didn’t see him stare at them for a good minute or five before kicking them out. 

 

    Keith hums, keeping his silence. 

 

    “You’ve been here for a while,” the bartender starts. “Who ya waiting for?” 

 

    “What makes you think I’m waiting for someone?” It’s not like he can’t do business in a place that was known for meeting up with people if it was clear you weren’t interested in what was going on in the dance floor, but it didn’t make things easier, and Keith’s stomach was already grumbling for the meal his AI droid had probably already stored away before it got cold. 

 

    The bartender wipes away the last drops of blue before throwing the rag over his shoulder, staining his navy blue vest neon. Apparently bored with the conversation— or with Keith in general— he leans back and, from underneath the counter, hefts a crate full of the vibrant little boxes Keith saw the android serving the crowd. Up close, he can see Altean characters scribbled on the side of the yellow and blue boxes, and Galran characters on the purple and pink. 

 

    The same android with neon green hair and the plastic dress walks towards the bar, his tray now empty. The plastic covering his genitals is now void of any transparency, a pink handprint covering where his synthetic dick would be. Keith looks up at the droid to gauge his expression, his eyebrows shooting up when he sees the droid already looking at him from the corner of his eye, a satisfied little smile on his lips. The bartender fills his tray with more condoms and small boxes, and, once happy with the amount of it on the tray, he sends the android back into the crowd. 

 

    As he leaves, he sends Keith a wink as a farewell.

 

    “What are those?” Keith points at the android. 

 

    “Androids or condoms?” The man asks, his thin eyebrows bent down in an inquisitive look, and a little worry. Keith rolls his eyes. 

 

    “The boxes.”

 

    “Are these what you’re here for?”

 

    Keith shakes his head. “Just askin’.”

 

    The man sorts through what remains in the crate for about half a minute, separating the Galran from Altean boxes before answering. “Charms.” He says. Ambiguous. Keith’s left eyebrow twitches.

 

“What kind of charms?”

 

“You ever heard about that kid that’s been running around hacking shit?” 

 

Keith frowns. Everyone on the Coruscant Quadrant knew of the young hacker. It was rare not to see the red and blue flashes across tablets, headsets, holographic billboards and all things alike warning users to protect their information against the keylogger after a short, twenty second clip of some kid in quarantine-style suit tapping the camera and singing  _ “testing, testing, one, two, three~”  _ interrupted every and any use of all electronics in the entire quadrant. Keith’s holographic television had flared up to show the clip, almost giving him a heart attack, since he’d tweaked it to be virtually impossible to tap into.

 

    There was a major decry when the warnings first went out, now that everything was technological— you couldn’t even wipe your ass without a droid hovering beside you. Many people had claimed the warnings were fake; that the government wanted to reinforce their security and deliberately “hacked” into their own database to cause mass hysteria and promote anti-virus and firewall companies. Following these rumors, the government agreed as a half-assed way of calming the public, but everyone knew better, even back then.

 

    To this day, the best response Keith had ever seen to an official statement to the public was when the hacker had changed all the billboards to blink an image of a cartoon character with spiral eyes, accompanied by the words, “Whatever helps you sleep at night, pig fuckers.” After that, it seemed the hacker couldn’t give less of a damn about mundane civilization. The only electronics that were tapped into were government issued, as if the hacker had a cyberpunk vendetta for the Capital. 

 

“You think it’s a kid?” Keith asks instead. “The one in the video?”

 

“Nah,” says the bartender, smiling, “there’s no way you’re  _ this  _ smart at a young age.” He shrugs. “Besides, how do you know it’s a kid? Could’ve used something to change the voice, for all we know.” Suddenly, he leans forward, giddy, like he’s about to let Keith in on the best secret. “I hear it’s actually a duo of hackers. Some even say it’s a  _ gang _ of hackers. A cybernetic mob. A—“

 

“So, what’s this have to do with that?” Keith cuts him off. He grabs a pink box, turning it around in his hand. The Galran character reads  _ Deity.  _

 

“Ah!” The man leans closer, the club’s fluorescent lights catching and reflecting off his eyes. At this distance, Keith can see various shades of blue in his irises, and in them he sees small white and purple dots that shine like stars, all swirling around the pupil like a galaxy in motion. “That’s to lure the hackers out.” He picks a pink one up himself, pointing at it. “There’s a chip inside that’s said to contain important government files, since fucking them over is all they seem tocare about. Only the hackers know how to find it, though, and when they do,  _ BAM! _ ” He slams his hand against the counter, making Keith’s lip twitch upwards. “Capital knows where they are and they get a pin to their location.”

 

Keith shakes the box next to his ear. It rattles softly, though it’s muffled by the music behind him. He looks up at the man, who shrugs and motions him to unbox it, and he tears open the lid. From inside, he pulls a keychain, and, attached to it, is a miniature sized dildo in deep purple. He looks up at the man again, though this time he glares in incredulity. The bartender shrugs again. 

 

“Told you; only  _ they  _ know how to find it.” 

 

Keith reaches out and picks one with Altean markings and from it pulls out a small stuffed animal. He squeezes its middle, rubbing the cotton to try and feel for a microchip inside, but finds nothing. He’s about to pick up another box when his name is called loudly from the side.

 

When he turns, his gaze rakes up yellow and cream skin before his eyes land on big violet ones. The woman smirks at the prospect of catching his attention. The man beside her rolls his eyes, beckoning him towards a booth they’d reserved for themselves. 

 

Keith turns to the bartender to excuse himself— show he wasn’t raised without manners— but he sees him staring at the way the yellow skinned woman’s hips sway dramatically as she walks away, practically drooling. Sighing, he figures knowing he has good manners instead of acting upon them is good enough sometimes.

 

Keith snaps his fingers in front of his face rudely before saying, “Thanks for the pop culture lesson.” 

 

Still enthralled by the alien woman, he nods subconsciously. “Uhu.” He waves at Keith. “Take a few.” 

 

“You sure?”

 

The man finally turns to face him. “Yeah, go ahead. I’m sure I won’t see you out there tryna catch one.” He jerks his thumb toward the crowd of people grinding and laughing and spilling neon drinks on each other, and… yeah, he’s got a point. So, Keith reaches out and grabs one blue Altean box and hopes his AI droid accepts it as an apology for coming home late. 

 

“Thanks.” 

 

Making his way around the crowd, he approaches the two aliens from before with a prompt nod in way of a vocal greeting. The woman, tall and pale, with wide hands and various pigtails connected to her body like a Twi’lek, smiles at him. Keith can see his reflection staring back at him in her violet sclera and lilac irises. Her partner, broad shouldered and slim waisted, rests smooth periwinkle arms on the table, the four plum scales on his upper arms glinting iridescent under the club’s lights. 

 

Keith clears his throat. “Nyma and Rolo, I presume?” 

 

“You’re Kogane?” asks Rolo. Keith nods curtly as the man gives him a once-over. Rolo tilts his head to the side, white hair falling over his eyes. “I didn’t think you’d be a—”

 

“Do you want the AVA or not?” he snaps before the sentence is finished. Rolo’s eyes widen, forcing Nyma to speak before he has the chance to open his mouth. 

 

“Pay him no mind.” She excuses her partner. “How much for the device?” 

 

“Three-hundred GAC—” Keith pauses. The AVA took Keith months to repair, its wires tangled and sparking when he’d found it in the alley perpetually designated as the Junkyard. Now with the press of a button, the small metal ball throws a net laced with electromagnetic charge, sapping the energy from whatever object it lands on and forcing it to power down for, at least, three hours. Keith regards this and Rolo’s comment before adding, “Make it four-fifty.” 

 

Nyma nods before Rolo speaks again, swiping her hand to the right. A holographic purple screen appears before her with various tabs in a language Keith recognizes but cannot, for the life worth in Hell, read. She taps and scrolls around it, and as soon as Keith’s chest pocket dings, he reaches into his bag and tosses the sphere across the table. Rolo catches it with a swift move of a scaled arm. Keith then swipes his left hand to the right and looks at his own screen. 

 

_ Five-hundred and fifty Galactic Automated Coins (GAC) have been added to your account by: Nyma-XXXX-Nunb. _

 

__ Keith glances up at her as she and her partner stand. “What’s the other hundred for?” 

 

“To keep you quiet.” She winks at him, long eyelashes fluttering with the movement of her eyes, and then she’s gone with Rolo in tow, walking through the crowd and artfully avoiding dancing patrons and spilt liquids.

 

Keith leans back in his seat, straightening his dark red coat. He pulls the hood over his head, slipping his bag over his shoulders before making his way around the crowd and towards the exit like his clients did. As he’s crossing the bar, the same bartender from before calls out to him. 

 

“Already leaving, eh?” he almost yells through the music. 

 

Keith nods. The man understands the lack of verbal response immediately. 

 

“Go.” he says. “Best not run into someone you’re playing cat and mouse with.”

 

Keith turns, waving his hand in gratitude when he hears the man say, “If ya ever need anything, come on over here and ask for Lance! I’ll be happy to help!” 

 

Outside, the clouds have gathered and ice cold rain pours down in heavy waves. Hovercrafts of every size and shape fly above him at the speed of light, repulsorcrafts and starships leaving a trail of blue light behind them. The upper halves of the skyscrapers are fogged by dark clouds, letting Keith know that the rain isn’t planning on clearing up any time soon. Keith tugs his bag closer and prepares himself mentally and physically to get soaked in freezing rainwater. 

 

His droid is going to kill him. 

 

* * *

  
  
  
  
  


Although it’s pouring around the apartment complex, a narrow strip of a path leading to the entrance of his home on the rooftop stays dry as a bone. As the exit door slides closed behind him with a soft click, Keith pulls down his hood and strips himself off the now-heavy coat, shivering softly at the temperature. If there’s one thing he misses from Earth, it’s how rain doesn’t always feel like a million daggers of ice. 

 

    Crossing the distance from the emergency exit to his pocket of a house, the entrance whirs open for him with his hand pressed to the handle. He steps inside and tosses his coat to the side with a wet smack of cloth. 

 

    Keith hears her before he sees her. 

 

_ “You’re late.”  _

 

He winces, dropping his bag next to the door and toeing off one of his wet boots. His clothes, drenched, cling to him like a second skin. 

 

“Yeah. I’m sorry.” He watches his bangs drip on the white floor. “My clients ran late and the bartender chatted me up for quite a while.” 

 

Soft light shines at his side, reflecting on the tiles and glistening on the water in his hair and skin and the droplets on the floor. The hallway, now illuminated in blue, pulses gently, the blue fading in and out in time to an artificial heartbeat. Keith finishes pulling off his other boot by the time he feels the warmth of the heater envelop his body. 

 

“Which bartender?” She asks him. Keith peels away his shirt, throwing it right on the coat before facing her. He grins.

 

“What, are you jealous, Allura?” he teases. 

 

The droid scoffs and turns around, her short silver hair swaying behind her. The blue light pulses away from the hallway, but at a faster pace now. 

 

“Wait!” Keith almost trips over his feet chasing after her. “Woah, woah, woah.” 

 

In the kitchen, he holds her by the elbow, pulling her slightly back into him. She’s dressed differently than how she was before he left to the club. Whereas she wore a pink pantsuit in the afternoon, she now fashions a short dress with a plunging v neck made of silk the color of her hair. She looks striking, truly, her blue halo dipping into the folds of her dress and creating iridescent shades. Keith reaches up, taking a strand of her hair between index and middle finger. It’s short now, reaching just below her jaw, and her thick curls have been straightened.

 

“This is new.” He notes, curling the hair in his fingers. “Did you do this right after I left?” 

 

The android’s cheeks darken in an imitation of a blush.  _ “ _ Yes. I thought you’d like it.” She turns, pulling away from him and towards the container of food set out in the kitchen counter. “I also figured if you didn’t end up liking it,  _ I _ like it enough to keep it.”

 

Keith huffs out a laugh. And people dare say androids have no feelings.

 

Allura takes a step back, softly pulling her elbow out of Keith’s pliant hand, and she turns to the counter to cup a transparent bowl full of rice, fish meat, eggs and a golden powder Keith’s recently been into after a client spoke to him about it. Her blue aura saturates around her hands as she heats the bowl, the translucent ceramic fogging up. She faces Keith and offers him the bowl in one hand and a fork in the other. “Enjoy your meal _.”  _

 

“You sound like you’re a parlor maid more than a resident when you say that.” Keith rolls his eyes at the droid, though he gives her a slight bow of his head as a wordless expression of gratitude. He leans his hip on the counter, shoving a forkful of food into his mouth. 

 

_ “ _ You treat me like a companion more than a droid when you’re around me _.” _ Allura shoots back. Keith nearly chokes with the double entendre of  _ companion.  _ “Someone has to make sure you eat. I’m just doing what I was designed to do.”

 

__ “You’re way too self aware for an android.” Keith mumbles.

 

“You’re way too good for a pirate, and yet we continue without stopping one another.”

 

Keith hums around his mouthful. He watches Allura sort through cabinets, putting away plates and cups she had cleaned while he was gone. Her dress hitches up when she stretches, revealing the soft curve of the back of her thigh. His eyes snap back to his bowl when she turns to look at him. 

 

“Stop thinking of maid outfits.” 

 

He grumbles. “I wasn’t doing that.” Not that he hadn’t before, though. “What could possibly make you think that’s all I think about when I look at you?” 

 

“That’s not what I said either.” Allura holds her hand out, waiting patiently until Keith shoves the last grains of rice into his mouth and places the bowl on it. She works quickly on loading it into the automatic washer while Keith steps around her to search the fridge for beer. Upon finding the translucent blue bottle, he knocks the neck on the counter beside the sink, startling the android when the cap pops off. He chuckles when she glares. 

 

“Give me some.” She says. 

 

“You’re gonna fry your circuits.” He hands her the beer anyway. 

 

“I liked it better when you were out in clubs and not judging what I did.” 

 

This pulls out a snort from Keith. He stares as Allura raises the bottle to her lips and takes a long swing. Her pale eyebrows frown at the fizzy sensation of the bubbles like they always do when she drinks something she’s not supposed to. When she hands him back the beer, her blue aura gleams a lighter, bluebird shade. She offers him a small pull of the lips. If he focuses, he thinks he could see the pink of her pupil expand to express contentment. She’s colorful and happy and she has no idea how much it means to Keith that he got to pull a smile out of her.

 

    She senses this and slowly turns her blue halo a cyan color, like the drinks in the club.

 

Keith frowns at that. “Oh, yeah.” 

 

He takes the drink from her hand, knocking back a gulp as he steps away from the kitchen. The droid follows him through the apartment until they reach the entrance hallway, where he kneels and riffles through his damp coat, pulling the pockets inside-out until he finds what he’s looking for. When he does, he stands and presents it to Allura. 

 

“What is it?” A petite hand reaches out and picks up the bright blue Altean box. She turns it on its sides, inspecting every corner. Keith crosses his arms over his naked chest and leans his back against the wall. 

 

“A box.” 

 

Allura glares at him. “I know that.” She goes back to inspecting it, shaking it softly against her ear the way Keith had. A smile breaks his expression in half before he’s even aware of it. “It’s one of those Altean boxes from Underground.” 

 

Keith hums. Underground isn’t something you hear of often. It’s a terrifying subject for most people, and a taboo to others. He’d heard some planets had even banned conversations of the Underground, going as far as arresting people if officials had a suspicion of them being interested or related to it. He wonders why the hell Allura knows enough about it to recognize the small box when he, himself, hadn’t. He wonders why the hell she’d never mentioned it before, considering it’s not a rare topic among quiet dinners spent in their small kitchen.

 

“What do you mean?” He asks. The android, instead, ignores him in favor of sticking her index finger through a side opening and popping the box open. From inside, she pulls a long silver chain with a metal heart pendant at the bottom. Her blue eyes slide from the necklace to look at Keith, who’s already doing his best to ignore his burning red ears. 

 

“I didn’t know what was inside…” He tries. 

 

He can feel Allura smiling without even looking at her. “Uhu.”

 

The blush spreads down to his cheeks and nose. “I got a dildo in mine.”

 

“Sounds like the universe is trying to tell you something.” 

 

It reaches his neck. “Whatever.” He pushes himself back from the wall and swallows half of his beer in one go before his chest threatens to look sunburnt, too. 

 

“Did I upset you?” She calls out after him, not sounding like she harbors even a speck of sympathy.

 

Keith scoffs. His cheeks refuse to turn any shade that isn’t pink, but sitting by the couch between the hall and dining table where the lights dim and the view is focused on the floor-to-ceiling windows helps distract from his persistent blush. Allura crosses her arms and cocks her hip to the side in a beautiful curve. She smirks at him and waits for Keith to say something he doesn’t even know. She’s already wearing the necklace. He stares at her. 

 

“You—”

 

With a loud ripping sound followed by the biggest bang he’d heard in his life, Keith is interrupted mid-sentence. 

 

He jumps; Allura stands still, though her eyes are wide and worried. Placing his bottle on the floor, he springs up from the couch and towards the hallway, picking up his damp shirt before the droid has the chance to tell him he’s going to catch a cold. 

 

Ignoring the cold rain, Keith throws open the entrance door and steps out. Outside, their home is the same empty rooftop there always is. Keith spins in place, squinting through the rainfall and taking note of Allura locking their door and walking towards the railing with her hands wrapped around herself, her aura muted by the light of billboards and hover cars outside. She leans forward to look around the first floor of the building, her short hair falling around her face in a curtain, slowly clumping together by the rain, the silk of her dress darkening in patches.

 

“Allura!”

 

“There’s someone down there.”

 

“What?”

 

“There’s someone in the dumpsters.”

 

He sprints towards her. His chest already shakes from the cold, and when he places a hand beside Allura’s, it’s paper white and shivering. He leans forward, matching her stance, and squints once more until he makes out a lump by the dumpsters like she had stated. 

 

He hears Allura curse softly. He turns to her. “We have to—”

 

“No.”

 

“But—”

 

“No.”

 

Keith huffs. “Why not?”

 

    “We don’t know who he is.” Keith’s hair stands at the back of his neck and arms, but not because of the cold, but because of the look Allura gives him. “What if they’re an android?”

 

“You’re an android.”

 

“You programmed me.”

 

“You were given to me and I  _ re _ programmed you.” He corrects her, voice stern but eyes soft. “And so far, you have been the best choice I’ve ever made.”

 

She stares at him. The rainwater streaks down her face and clumps her pale eyelashes together. Her hair, matted and dripping, starts to curl slightly around her cheeks. She gives him an expression meant to show frustration, though it falls short on worry. “I was  _ ‘given to you _ ’ as payment by someone who wasted the money they meant to give you by buying me instead.” 

 

“So?”

 

“So, what if I had turned out to be bad? Even if you  _ reprogrammed _ me?” She looks at him deeply, pink pupils expanding and retracting. She’s afraid. Terrified, really. Keith knows she’s never been really been good with change, even as an Android who’s supposed to come pre-programmed without fears. AI technology was never designed to express emotions unless they mimicked it. Having been raised by Keith, who dealt with abandonment issues and nightmares and problems with authority on a day-to-day basis, he was sure Allura knew these emotions like they were her own. Hell, they  _ were _ her own, now.

 

Keith takes her small hand in his, squeezing lightly before letting go. He knows the fear she feels by heart— he knows it like a second home— but he also knows the risks of leaving someone behind like this, especially in an alley dumpster, where it seemed they came straight from a rip in the sky. Bad or not, android or alien or human, Keith wouldn’t feel right leaving them like this.

 

”But you didn’t.” He tells her— reminds her, even. “What if they don’t either?”

 

Allura bites her lip. She mulls it over, rewiring circuits and rewriting percentages at the speed of light. She looks over the edge at the distinctively human figure lying amongst the black and blue garbage bags. When she turns to face Keith, who raises his eyebrows in question, she sighs, though it sounds more like aggravation rather than acceptance or reluctance. 

 

“Fine.” She says. “Let’s go get them before you die in this weather.” 

 

Keith grins.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> kudos if you catch all five SW references
> 
> twitter: shibarikeith  
> tumblr: tequieroshiro


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